Growing Green

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The Idea in Brief

Green growth is at the top of many leaders’ agendas, but the way forward is rarely clear. Here are three broad product strategies that can align your green goals with your capabilities.

An accentuate strategy involves highlighting existing green attributes in your company’s portfolio. An alternative is to acquire a green brand. If you have substantial product-development skills and assets, you can architect new offerings—build them from scratch. Which strategy is best depends on how “greenable” your portfolio is and how advanced your green product development capabilities are.

For any of these paths, understanding customers’ expectations and competitors’ capabilities, and aligning offerings and messaging to prevent charges of greenwashing, are essential to success.

Soon after its launch, in 1987, Clorox’s Brita water filter seized a leadership position among pitcher filtration systems, and by 2002 it controlled 70% of the market. But over the next five years, as the market contracted, Brita’s share declined. Management’s patience with the brand soon wore thin, and in May 2007 Clorox CEO Don Knauss told shareholders that Brita had two years to improve or it would be sold off. “When I got on board,” Knauss remembers, “the question was, How quickly can we sell this thing?” Then came a remarkable turn: Brita recovered its momentum within months, achieving double-digit growth and leading the brand back with a vengeance.

How did its managers do it? By going green, as we’ll detail below.

That strategy wouldn’t have been obvious 10 years ago. But thanks to aggressive leadership by some of the world’s biggest companies—Wal-Mart, GE, and DuPont among them—green growth has risen to the top of the agenda for many businesses. From 2007 to 2009 eco-friendly product launches increased by more than 500%. A recent IBM survey found that two-thirds of executives see sustainability as a revenue driver, and half of them expect green initiatives to confer competitive advantage. This dramatic shift in corporate mind-set and practices over the past decade reflects a growing awareness that environmental responsibility can be a platform for both growth and differentiation.

Nonetheless, the best approach to achieving green growth isn’t always clear. This article is for executives who believe that developing green products makes sense for their organization and need to determine the best path forward. We will introduce and describe three broad strategies—accentuate, acquire, and architect—that companies can use to align their green goals with their capabilities. These strategies emerged from 10 in-depth case studies of consumer product and industrial companies that were moving into the green space; we validated the studies in discussions with dozens of senior and midlevel sustainability executives. The framework now plays a central role in the core executive MBA course offerings in sustainable business strategy and in the executive education programs at Thunderbird School of Global Management.

As we’ll see, green product development brings with it unique cultural, operational, and execution challenges.

Path #1: Accentuate

An accentuate strategy involves playing up existing or latent green attributes in your current portfolio. Of the three strategies, it’s the most straightforward to craft and implement and thus is a good place to start.

Some companies find it easy to accentuate. For example, Church & Dwight’s Arm & Hammer baking soda has attributes that were just waiting to be leveraged. As green competitors emerged, and as customers demanded more environmentally friendly choices, Arm & Hammer’s managers emphasized its green credentials, positioning the brand as “the #1 environmentally sensible alternative for cleaning and deodorizing” and “committed to the environment since 1846.”

Marketing communications: Stihl points out that its trimmers and blowers have emission levels lower than those required by the EPA.

Other companies may have to work harder than Church & Dwight did, but they can still harvest low-hanging green fruit. Consider how Brita repositioned its water filters. A decade ago Brita’s sales were siphoned off by the rising popularity of bottled water, which exploded into a billion-dollar business. But water bottlers attracted loud critics such as the World Wide Fund for Nature and Corporate Accountability International, which condemned them for clogging landfills with plastic and deceptively advertising their product as better tasting and healthier than tap water.

Brita’s managers were quick to see an opportunity. Company research showed that replacing bottled water with Brita systems could potentially keep millions of bottles a year out of landfills. To capitalize on this benefit, the managers pursued an integrated cross-media communications strategy to tout Brita’s green attributes, educate consumers about bottle waste, and encourage a switch to greener alternatives. As part of this strategy, the company launched FilterForGood, a website that invites visitors to pledge that they will reduce plastic waste by switching to reusable bottles. A device on the site graphically updates the tally of bottles saved. Brita’s managers ensured that the media picked up on FilterForGood—for example, by arranging a partnership with NBC’s television show The Biggest Loser. Within a year the company’s water pitcher sales jumped a robust 23%, compared with just 2% for the category overall.

Brita’s impressive success came in part because it did not overreach in its sustainability claims. Companies that decide to pursue an accentuate strategy would be wise to follow its lead. Activists and environmental experts will not hesitate to point out greenwashing or other undesirable corporate behavior when they see it. Consider the experience of Arm & Hammer. Promoting the environmentally friendly attributes of the product was easy, but the company overlooked a major liability: It used animal testing. Activists took to the blogosphere and called on customers to switch to the cruelty-free and equally green Bob’s Red Mill baking soda. Although such complaints won’t necessarily reach or resonate with all your customers, anticipating and heading off criticism will strengthen your overall greening efforts. Transparency in claims and authenticity in execution are important elements in the long-term success of any green strategy.

The broader your brand portfolio, of course, the more exposed you may be to activist and consumer backlash. Most companies lack a green heritage; their products were developed before sustainability was a concern. So they must carefully gauge how the rest of their portfolio will look by comparison with the accentuated product. Touting the green attributes of some products inevitably prompts the response “Great! But what about the rest of your offerings?” A big gulf between your green and nongreen products can undermine your legitimate sustainability claims.

Consider BP’s troubled “Beyond Petroleum” rebranding effort. The company’s Helios logo and the prominent solar panels on its service stations could not hide the fact that more than 90% of its revenues came from oil. Fortune highlighted the disparity when it wrote, “Here’s a novel advertising strategy—pitch your least important product and ignore your most important one.” To avoid negative commentary like this, make sure your strategy aligns with customers’ perceptions.

Brita did that well. Its managers were careful in their initial communications not to claim that their brand was a “green product” made by a “green company.” They recognized that Brita filter cartridges had to be replaced every few months and were not being recycled. Because the FilterForGood campaign was predicated on eliminating that kind of waste, the managers realized that they needed a recycling solution for the cartridges. They forged an approach in collaboration with Preserve, which manufactures products using recycled plastic, and with Whole Foods Market to provide a solution that was simple for customers and highly visible.

“The filter recycling program builds on the success of Brita’s FilterForGood campaign,” the company announced—and went on to share credit with its customers: “Now Brita users are making another positive impact by recycling Brita pitcher filters.” By accentuating the product’s green attributes and eliminating or mitigating its nongreen elements, Brita enhanced the credibility of its sustainability efforts.

Path #2: Acquire

If your portfolio has no obvious candidates for accentuation, a good alternative is to buy someone else’s green brand. Many high-profile green acquisitions have been made since 2000, including The Body Shop by L’Oréal, Ben & Jerry’s by Unilever, and Tom’s of Maine by Colgate-Palmolive. In such deals the buyer’s channel and distribution capabilities are often expected to substantially broaden the green brand’s customer base. Within a year after Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s, for example, sales had increased by 70% and Ben & Jerry’s had displaced Häagen Dazs as the leading premium ice cream brand.

Best Practices: Who Acquires Well?

Negotiations: Colgate approached Tom’s of Maine with trust and respect, viewing the deal as a partnership rather than a takeover.

Company independence: Unilever agreed to keep Ben & Jerry’s separate from its U.S. ice cream business, with an independent board of directors.

Internal communications: Tom’s of Maine assured employees that the acquisition would help Colgate innovate around sustainability principles.

External communications: A joint press release from Danone and Stonyfield highlighted the benefits to both companies of two-way knowledge and talent transfer.

The prospect of such robust growth is of course appealing, but managers who seek another company’s green assets should be mindful of two considerations: Culture clash and strategic fit. Any merger or acquisition can stumble when company cultures collide. In green acquisitions that have idealistic, iconoclastic founders and countercultural workforces, the problem is exacerbated. Consider Groupe Danone’s takeover of Stonyfield Farm. When shareholders forced Stonyfield’s founder, Gary Hirshberg, to sell, he spent two years compiling a list of conditions—including rules about worker protection and environmental restrictions on business operations—to ensure that the company’s social mission would be preserved. It took another two years to close the deal. By contrast, Unilever got around some but not all of the “founder challenges” at Ben & Jerry’s by completing what was in effect a hostile buyout of the brand. This approach caused many activists to cry foul and deprived Unilever of the wholehearted support of the ice cream maker’s founders. Ben Cohen said, “Most of what had been the soul of Ben & Jerry’s is not gonna be around anymore.”

All acquisitions present myriad management challenges, so the problems of integrating an idiosyncratic green business may not seem like a big deal. But scrutiny by the green community may undermine the otherwise solid business benefits of the acquisition. Even if product sales go well, sharp questions will most likely arise about the new parent’s green credentials. If the acquisition goes badly and sales tumble, not only is the value of the new asset diminished but—potentially even more damaging—the acquirer risks being accused of deliberately destroying a green competitor. Coke faced such criticism after it bought Planet Java coffee drinks and Mad River Traders teas and juices and then phased them out two years later.

An acquiring company’s actions may have an adverse effect on the carefully crafted brand image of the acquisition. For example, when Danone’s agreement with Stonyfield about employee protection ended, Danone sent out pink slips and met with hostile reactions in the press. Such criticism may have limited impact on the bottom line, but it can diminish the credibility of a company’s green efforts.

Clorox had not only growth but also knowledge transfer in mind when it acquired Burt’s Bees.

Successful green brands are attractive targets because they have loyal customer bases and because they come with specialized knowledge about eco-friendly innovation and manufacturing, sustainable supply chain management, and green market development. Bill Morrissey, the vice president of environmental sustainability for Clorox, told us that Clorox had not only growth but also knowledge transfer in mind when it acquired Burt’s Bees, which had two decades of leadership in the green product space.

Path #3: Architect

For companies with a history of innovation and substantial new-product-development assets, architecting green offerings—building them from scratch—becomes a possibility. Although architecting can be slower and more costly than accentuating or acquiring, it may be the best strategy for some companies, because it forces them to build valuable competencies. Toyota took this route when it developed the Prius. Although the company is currently addressing a raft of quality problems, the lessons of its architect strategy still stand. The Prius was not the first hybrid introduced in the U.S. market (the Honda Insight was), but it now dominates the fast-growing market for more-fuel-efficient cars. Toyota’s bold move to create a green brand has paid handsome dividends. The Prius towers over the Insight, its closest competitor, in market share. Its dominance has so distracted consumers from rival brands that some Honda dealers complain of customers who walk into their showrooms and request a test-drive in the “Honda Prius.” Toyota has also successfully transferred its hybrid expertise and green know-how to other brands in its portfolio. In 2005 the company became the first to establish green credentials in the luxury-car space when it produced a hybrid version of the Lexus. Over time, Toyota’s luxury competitors were forced to follow suit. Mercedes-Benz and BMW recently introduced hybrid models to meet growing consumer demand and to establish their green credentials and capabilities, and Audi and Porsche will soon do the same.

Best Practices: Who Architects Well?

New-product development: Toyota directed its engineers to develop a new fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly vehicle within three years.

New production methods: Patagonia created a line of products using a closed-loop production system it calls EcoCircle.

Skunkworks: Clorox provided the resources for a separate Green Works business unit.

Clorox, too, in developing its Green Works cleaning products, shows how companies with limited green expertise but substantial product development capabilities can architect a green brand. Green Works has received a lot of press, but the details of Clorox’s strategy—which we studied from inside the company—are less well known. The line of household cleaners emerged from a small skunkworks in the Clorox Technical Center led by a handful of independent and dedicated scientists. In less than a year company researchers established the benchmark definition and best practices for a “natural” cleaning product and proceeded to design a line of offerings that would deliver the efficacy customers demand. The big surprise came when the marketing team shopped the original five Green Works products (glass, surface, all-purpose, bathroom, and toilet-bowl cleaners) to major distributors, including Wal-Mart and Safeway. According to a Green Works manager, “The realistic part of our expectations was ‘Hey, if we get three or four SKUs, we’ll be pretty happy.’” To the team’s delight, Wal-Mart wanted all five. Distributors across the board asked for the entire Green Works line and requested that the brand be extended into other categories.

The development of Green Works induced Clorox to accumulate a range of new competencies, including specialized knowledge about eco-conscious consumers’ preferences and expertise in the supply chain for natural-product sourcing and procurement. Through its deepened relationships with Wal-Mart and other distributors, Clorox quickly doubled the size of the “green clean” market. Even niche brands such as Seventh Generation and Method benefited from its market development.

Making Green Growth Happen

With an understanding of the three paths to green growth, managers can begin to craft a strategy that suits their objectives and their business context. They should begin by evaluating each option: Is it feasible? Is it desirable? How would it be implemented?

Analyzing Growth Options

To evaluate the fit of a given green product strategy, ask the following questions:

Accentuate

First steps

What’s our strategic goal?

To leverage latent assets?

Revitalize existing brands?

Broaden appeal to green customers?

Gain green credibility?

Are there potential green brands in our portfolio?

Do we have the resources and capabilities needed for this initiative?

Your portfolio

How will this initiative affect the positioning of and resources for our existing brands?

Should our greened brand be a stand-alone or a strategic brand that puts a green halo on the business as a whole?

Your customers

Which consumers in the category are looking for greener products?

Does our candidate brand have “permission” to enter the green space?

Can we enhance the value of green in the category?

Your competitors

Are our competitors greening their existing products?

Can we differentiate our brand?

How can we exploit our competitors’ green weaknesses?

How can we capture a “share of voice” in the category?

Red flags

Do we have environmental skeletons in our current portfolio or business model?

Will our green claims be credible—or are we vulnerable to accusations of “greenwashing”?

Acquire

First steps

What’s our strategic goal?

To capture customers?

Bring in new green capabilities?

Broaden access to mainstream customers?

Gain green credibility?

Which companies would make attractive green acquisitions?

Do we have the resources and capabilities needed for this initiative?

Your portfolio

How will this initiative affect the positioning of and resources for our existing brands?

Will the initiative provide new abilities that can be applied to other brands?

Should our acquired brand be a stand-alone or a strategic brand that puts a green halo on the business as a whole?

Your customers

Can we sell the green brand to our current customers?

Will acquired customers view us as a credible steward of the brand?

Your competitors

Is this the prototypical brand in the green niche?

How can we exploit our competitors’ green weaknesses?

How can we prevent competitors from poaching our newly acquired customers?

Can we add green attributes to the new brand or emphasize existing attributes to increase competitiveness?

Red flags

Do we have environmental skeletons in our current portfolio or business model?

Will our green claims be credible—or are we vulnerable to accusations of “greenwashing”?

Does the proposed acquisition have an iconic founder, a countercultural workforce, or some other aspect that might create culture clash?

Can we preserve the integrity—“the magic”—of the acquired brand?

Architect

First steps

What’s our strategic goal?

To create new green solutions?

Develop unique competencies?

Respond to new market needs?

Gain green credibility?

Will an independent business unit be required?

Do we have the resources and capabilities needed for this initiative?

Your portfolio

How will this initiative affect the positioning of and resources for our existing brands?

Will the initiative provide new abilities that can be applied to other brands?

What will be the relationship between the parent and the new line?

Your customers

What innovations are consumers looking for in a greener alternative?

Does our parent brand have “permission” to enter the green space?

Will this initiative require us to develop a new brand?

Will we need to educate and develop the market and bring new customers into the category?

Your competitors

Are we creating a new green category?

Can we differentiate our brand?

How can we exploit our competitors’ green weaknesses?

Does the category already have entrenched competitors?

Red flags

Do we have environmental skeletons in our current portfolio or business model?

Will our green claims be credible—or are we vulnerable to accusations of “greenwashing”?

Feasibility.

In this step companies take stock of their assets along two dimensions: greenable attributes of their existing products and brands, and organizational green product and brand development capabilities. The first requires a careful review of opportunities to promote brands’ green benefits. Of course, each product will have its own category-specific attributes, ranging from recyclability to energy efficiency to reduced toxicity. The Global Reporting Initiative’s list of more than 70 sustainability performance indicators is an excellent resource for managers. It can help them to identify less obvious green features and benefits that are suited to an accentuate approach or to frame strategies and gauge capabilities required for an architect approach.

The second dimension involves appraising the company’s green resources and capabilities. This may include a broad review of the processes and priorities for innovation and new-product development, supply chain management, the coordination of and collaboration among distributors, and even partnerships with environmental organizations.

Desirability.

In this step, managers assess the strategic fit of each option with the company’s objectives and the resources they can bring to bear on the green initiative. They need to consider speed to market and the investments, reputation, and competencies that the initiative will require. For example, an acquire strategy will deliver high speed to market for a company setting out with low green credentials and low to medium green capabilities—but it involves significant investment. A company choosing an architect strategy must have high green capabilities and medium to high green credentials—and be prepared for a low speed to market. Companies unwilling or unable to allocate major resources for green initiatives will find accentuation the most attractive way to enter green markets. For others, green growth may be part of an enterprisewide sustainability initiative to retool operations, shift the culture, and, ultimately, reposition the organization.

Implementation.

This third step involves acting on all the factors that affect successful execution. As outlined in the exhibit “Analyzing Growth Options,” companies must align their green strategy with their existing product portfolio and devote or develop the resources and capabilities needed to achieve their strategic goals. They must ensure that the strategy satisfies customers’ expectations and, when possible, takes advantage of competitors’ green weaknesses. Finally, they must address “red flag” issues that could undermine implementation.

Whatever path you choose—accentuate, acquire, or architect—activists, customers, and the public won’t see your green initiatives as independent of your other activities and offerings. Rather, they will view your efforts as part of the organization’s overall approach. That means the companies that ultimately succeed in growing green will be distinguished by their commitment to corporatewide sustainability as well as the performance of their green products.

A version of this article appeared in the June 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review.